Call screening is commonly employed by individuals to decide whether an incoming call should be answered. Often, an individual will decline to answer an incoming call from a phone number that he or she does not recognize, due to the likelihood of that call being initiated by a telemarketer, prank caller, or an otherwise unfamiliar person (e.g., a nuisance call). In other cases, an individual may decline to answer an incoming call from a phone number that he or she recognizes to avoid talking to the particular individual associated with that phone number at that time.
While call screening may be convenient or beneficial in many circumstances, call screening can also have unanticipated or otherwise unintended consequences. For example, the incoming call may be from a known contact that the individual is anticipating a call from or whom the individual would otherwise desire to answer calls from, however, the incoming call may be from a phone number that is unfamiliar to the individual (e.g., due to that known contact's mobile device lacking service at his current location or lacking sufficient battery power to make the call, or when that contact has changed mobile devices or phone numbers). Furthermore, in some situations, the known contact may have an urgent need to reach the called individual but may be unable to do so due to the call screening by the called individual, and at the same time, the called individual is unaware of the known contact's urgent need to reach the called individual. Accordingly, it is desirable to mitigate undesirable or otherwise unintended consequences of call screening.